the cape of good hope
by irishais
Summary: They are the daughters she has always wanted. Edea, Rinoa, Ellone, and a coven of sorts. For ideakureima.


_the cape of good hope_

 _-irishais_ -

 _Ellone sleeps, sprawled across her narrow bunk, a salt-sea stained book dangling from her fingertips-- Edea gently takes it from her, and puts a flat sand dollar between the pages to mark her spot._

 _The White SeeD ship drifts and sways with the currents, destination unknown. She is almost victim to the pull of the sea, the beckoning of sleep; instead, Edea reaches for the blanket that Ellone has tangled beneath her feet, and draws it up over the child (her daughter, people say when they disembark in tiny port towns in far-flung countries, just look at the resemblance; how she wishes, how she wishes.)_

 _Ellone shifts a little, snuggles into the warmth of the covers, exhales and relaxes. She will be twelve next week, and not for the first time does Edea regret having to take her away from everything she's known, abandoning her childhood to a life on the water, her only companions tattered books and SeeDs that teach her what they can. And Edea. Always Edea. She lets her fingers graze Ellone's cheek, warm and soft, pink with sun._

She lets her fingers graze Ellone's cheek, more than a decade later, the woman curled up on the narrow couch, exhausted from the day's labors. They are trying, all of them, a coven of witches on an empty stretch of sand.

"Everything alright?" Rinoa, coming in from the kitchen with a tray of tea cups, delicate floral china that somehow survived the trip here (not a move, not an abandonment-- Cid knows how much she needs this place, the grounding of it after everything.)

"Hm--?" Her hand withdraws at the interruption of memory and moment, and Edea looks up at Rinoa. "Oh. Yes. Thank you."

Ellone's power is growing, changing; it buzzes in Edea's fingertips as she reaches for one of the cups, settling into a chair.

"Are you doing alright?" she asks of Rinoa, instead of lingering on the way the magic feels, like it's trying to come home to roost. She's given up her gift, that thing that's lived in her bones since she was five years old. One cannot blame her for missing it, nor for the hope that it might come back to her in some small capacity in the presence of such _enormity_ of it, between the three of them.

Rinoa is almost coltish in the way she sits and sprawls, long limbs and gleaming dark hair. She looks so much like her mother, in the faded pictures on the record covers that Edea has somewhere in her collection here, that it is startling sometimes, but in the next moment, Rinoa laughs or says something or tosses her hair in a way that is precisely _her_ , something to dash the illusion she is probably not even aware of casting.

"Me? I'm great. I mean, _tired_ , but I feel better, you know? Like... like I can control things a little more."

And isn't that why they're here, anyway? Her daughters, if only in the magical sense, coming to her for guidance, even if she has almost nothing left to offer them, just the way the power _felt_ , shimmering through her blood.

She loves all of her children, but these girls (young women, Edea corrects herself)... they resonate with her in a way that no one else truly has. She'd practically raised Ellone, anyway, and Rinoa's gift had come from _her_.

They are as much children _born_ from her as the ones she had desperately wanted and never been able to conceive, the ones that ended in sorrow, in emptiness.

She loves them both fiercely in that moment, and feels the air around her sparkle with it.

"I'm glad. You're doing very well-- much better than I was when I first inherited." Admittedly, she hadn't gone through a _war_ and had a crash-course in casting from SeeDs built to kill what she had become at the beginning of her succession, but Edea had shattered her fair share of windows and teacups and on one memorable occasion had blown out every light for three city blocks trying to master a thundaga during her university years in Deling.

She sips her tea, oversteeped and too sweet, but it is hot in her throat and warm in her limbs. There's a storm brewing outside, rumbling up to the orphanage's stone walls.

Ellone stirs with the clap of thunder, wakes slowly, lifting her head from where it had pillowed against the arm of the couch.

"Did I miss something?" she mumbles, and yawns. Rinoa passes her the third cup from the tray; Ellone's face brightens immediately. "Ooh-- yay, thank you."

"No, we were just talking." Edea offers her the sugar bowl before Ellone can ask, aware of her fondness for two lumps in her tea regardless of how sweet it is. Ellone drops the cubes in, and watches them melt.

Rinoa narrows her eyes in concentration, stirring up a tiny maelstrom in Elle's cup to disperse the residual sugar; it is only a few seconds, and the tea reverts to its still placidity a heartbeat later.

"You need to teach me how to do that."

Rinoa laughs, agrees to do just that. Edea settles back in her seat, feet tucked up under her, smiling.

Some things don't change; sometimes, _everything_ does.

They sit in comfortable silence for a while, listening to the rain beat down outside. Edea doesn't know when, but at some point after the war, Cid had sent contractors out here, armed with gil and blueprints, restoring the place to its pre-Garden glory (albeit with updated _everything_ ; while Edea is nostalgic, she can't say she doesn't appreciate a stove that turns on the first time, or the fact that all three of them can plug in their phones and laptops and hair dryers without blowing out the power, or dependable internet, or windows that sit flush in their frames and don't leak at the edges, splotching the fresh blue paint on the walls). Like he had known she would need the retreat here, even before she had known it herself.

The sea rears and bucks like a wild thing. At some point, they find themselves all on the sofa, turned toward it, watching the storm rage and the water hurl itself in its manic dance. Rinoa's face rapt in wonder, Ellone's eyes toward the sky, like she cannot decide if she would like to retreat beneath her bed like a child, or run out and dance in the rain.

Sometimes, Rinoa's magic sparks with the lightning. Edea reaches across, touches her shoulder gently to calm it, before everyone's hair is standing on end. Everything, everything changes.

But all of her children are always welcome _home_.

Edea turns her eyes to the lighthouse on the very farthest edge of the cape, the lamp bright and brilliant, a beacon in the dark.

(Come home, come home.)


End file.
